Sunday, September 12, 2010

There wasn’t much that went well for Georgia on Saturday. Not when you only score six points, and the defense lets a freshman run for 182 yards.

Here, quickly and painfully, are the postgame grades for each Bulldog unit:

QUARTERBACKS: Aaron Murray was solid, but he needed to be more. That’s not necessarily his fault, especially if the coaches weren’t using the full playbook, as they indicated afterwards. Murray was asked to manage the game and not commit turnovers. Largely, he did that. But he also needed to make things happen with his feet, and did not. …. B.

RUNNING BACKS: Washaun Ealey got off to a good start but stagnated a bit. He also didn’t show much breakaway ability, and had the critical fumble inside the 5. Carlton Thomas only got one carry, and Caleb King didn’t play with an ankle injury. The backs also weren’t a factor in the passing game, especially after Shaun Chapas got hurt. … C.

RECEIVERS/TIGHT ENDS: It’s a lot to ask with the best receiver out. Kris Durham had another good day getting what would have been Green’s routes. Tavarres King got open early, but then couldn’t later. No one else was much of a factor. The tight ends aren’t getting involved much, which needs to change given the talent at that position. You have to give credit to the South Carolina secondary, which has some studs back there, and the pressure Murray was getting late in the game. … C.

OFFENSIVE LINE: The front five did well early, and Murray had all day to throw for most of the first half. But it couldn’t open many holes in the running game, especially on the outside. The line struggled as the game went on, and for what should be the team’s strength, that can’t happen. … C.

DEFENSIVE LINE: Gamecock freshman Marcus Lattimore had 182 yards, and while it wasn’t all up the gut, it did seem that way. Also, total number of sacks this season for the front three? Zero. Demarcus Dobbs was the only one on Saturday to even make a tackle behind the line. … D-.

LINEBACKERS: Their stats are good. Five sacks from this unit, three of them by Justin Houston, while Christian Robinson also recovered a fumble. Darryl Gamble and Cornelius Washington combined for 15 tackles. But when you’re on the field a lot, that tends to happen. I can’t really hold the group at fault for any major screw-ups; they were just a part of the overall problem. … C+.

SECONDARY: Bacarri Rambo led the Bulldogs with tackles – now queue up the cliché’ that it's never good when a safety leads the team in tackles. That’s a team problem. But this group was also as guilty as anyone for the day’s major snafu, which was not wrapping up the ball-carrier. The 40-yard catch-and-run by Alshon Jeffery springs to mind. Pass coverage itself was almost a non-factor: South Carolina QB Stephen Garcia only needed to attempt 17 passes, and he completed 12 of them. … C.SPECIAL TEAMS: Well let’s see. Blair Walsh made both his field goal attempts, but they were short. Was Drew Butler sick or something? All his punts seemed low-hanging, leaving him with a 38-yard average net. Branden Smith totaled just four yards on two returns, and Brandon Boykin averaged 20 yards on two kick returns. The coverage wasn’t anything special either. … D.

COACHING: I think both coordinators would tell you, if they injected truth serum, that they should have made better adjustments.

Todd Grantham’s defense tightened up on Lattimore in the third quarter, but by the final drive the Gamecock freshman was running at will again. I know Grantham must have been afraid to stack the box, with Garcia and Jeffery there to exploit it. But you do wonder if at least stacking the middle, letting Justin Anderson and/or Kwame Geathers play more, would have accomplished something.

Offensively, the gameplan just didn’t work. Yes, not having A.J. Green really limited the passing offense. But as the game wore on and it became clear the offense had to do something, more flare was needed. It might have helped to see more Branden Smith, or to put Murray in a position to make plays with his feet, or get Tavarres King involved more. ... C.

OVERALL: Honestly, at no point did it really seem Georgia was going to win the game. You could say Georgia simply lost to a better team, which was playing at home. But the Bulldogs clearly didn’t help themselves, and have a lot of work to do if they want to beat No. 13 Arkansas next week.

You were perhaps kinder than I would have been, but I applaud you for a dispassionate and objective analysis.I would have given a D- for offensive coaching and C+ for offensive play. Similarly, I'd give B- for the defensive coaching and D- for defensive play. So, it's another way of saying that I wish we had the level of our O talent on our D, and level of D coaching on the O.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Seth Emerson has been covering the SEC and Georgia (on and off) since 2002. He worked at the Albany Herald from 2002-05, then spent five years at The State in Columbia, S.C., covering South Carolina. He returned to Athens in August of 2010, only to find that David Pollack and David Greene were no longer playing for the Bulldogs. Adjustments were made. Emerson is originally from Silver Spring, Md., and graduated from Maryland in 1998 with a degree in journalism and a minor in getting lost on the way to practically everywhere. Then he spent four years at The Washington Post, covering small colleges, a couple NCAA basketball tournaments, and on one glorious day, was yelled at by Tony Kornheiser. It was probably at The Post that he also learned to write in the third person.These days he lives in Athens with his beloved and somewhat wimpy dog, Archie. Together they fight crime at night in northeast Georgia, except on nights there is no crime, in which case they sit at home, sip on white wine and watch reruns of "Mad Men."